


Free

by Viscariafields



Series: Leandra Hawke [19]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II
Genre: Angst, Dragon Age II - Act 3, F/M, Hawke (Dragon Age) is Dead, Heavy Angst, Not Canon Compliant, Sad Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-20
Updated: 2020-07-20
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:34:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25403179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Viscariafields/pseuds/Viscariafields
Summary: I was told to add this warning: "Heart and soul shattering angst below this point"Fenris can’t remember her last words to him.He remembers her final utterance with complete clarity—a small grunt as the blade entered her back and burst straight through her armor. The gurgle as it was withdrawn. The clatter of her daggers falling from her hands. And finally, the last sound Hawke ever made, a thud as her body fell to the floor.Danarius fell a moment later, his heart first, then the rest of him. Fenris had already crossed the room, Hawke in his arms, still and empty.He remembers her last words to the world before the fight. Fenris is a free man.
Relationships: Fenris/Female Hawke
Series: Leandra Hawke [19]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1462840
Comments: 24
Kudos: 64





	Free

**Author's Note:**

> I was told to add this warning: "Heart and soul shattering angst below this point." I don't consider this canon for my Hawke, but I sure did write it.

Fenris can’t remember her last words to him.

He remembers her final utterance with complete clarity—a small grunt as the blade entered her back and burst straight through her armor. The gurgle as it was withdrawn. The clatter of her daggers falling from her hands. And finally, the last sound Hawke ever made, a thud as her body fell to the floor.

Danarius fell a moment later, his heart first, then the rest of him. Fenris had already crossed the room, Hawke in his arms, still and empty.

He remembers her last words to the world before the fight. _Fenris is a free man_.

 _The cost is too high_ , he wants to tell her corpse. _My freedom was never worth this_.

He stands in the back of the chantry during the service. He had refused to let her go—her blood staining the floor of the Hanged Man and as long as he held her in his arms, there was a chance none of this had truly happened—but someone hit him with a sleep spell and they took her away and Fenris would never see her again. Sebastian tells him there is room for him in the front, near the ornate urn of ashes that once composed the Champion of Kirkwall, but Fenris doesn’t respond. A free man can stand where he likes, and Fenris leaves before the service ends.

His feet take him to his crumbling mansion, but only as far as the foyer.

Free.

He is free to stay or to leave and both choices are meaningless, so he stands in a doorway watching motes of dust float. He supposes inaction is a choice.

There are noises in the mansion, and for a moment Fenris wonders if Danarius’s trap was not fully sprung. He can’t muster a response of any kind—he’s not sure where his sword is, and his markings have been flaring with no input from him, lighting up his skin at random. He doesn’t even turn his head toward the intruder, preferring that, should this be an attack, the last thing he sees would be the dust motes. It is only Isabela.

“I’m here to make sure you don’t do anything stupid,” she says. She holds a bottle of his wine, mostly drained. Fenris doesn’t ask her if staring at dust for hours qualifies as stupid. Her concern is unnecessary. Fenris has no intention of _doing_ anything at all.

Her last words to him must have happened here, in the mansion. Or did they talk on the way to the Hanged Man? She loves talking. Loved talking. She must have been talking about something while he worried about meeting his soon-to-be-dead sister—the weather, the newest market stall in Lowtown, the latest news from the Wardens. But was she talking, or was she talking _to_ him? He can’t remember.

Isabela puts a bottle in his hand. Evidently drinking does not qualify as stupid. He stares at the wine as if he can’t remember what to do with it.

“Where’s the dog?” he asks. He hasn’t spoken since—he hasn’t spoken. The words come out as a croak, and Isabela makes him repeat himself. “The dog,” he says, “where is he?”

“Varric took him. He’s staying at the Rose.”

“Why?” Fenris asks.

Isabela doesn’t answer. She looks at him, then down at the full bottle in his hand, and she walks away.

She had arrived without warning, as she always does. Did. Some of these footprints in his dust must have been hers. He had asked her to accompany him to meet Varania. Her words—he wants to remember them perfectly if they were, indeed, her last.

 _Of course I’ll come with you,_ she had said, _Do you even need to ask?_

_Come with me_ , he’d begged. And now she was—she—

Fenris was cold. It was too dark to see the dust.

“Fenris?”

Varric is behind him. Sebastian, too, and the dog. He turns in his unlit foyer and lets his gaze fall on them.

“I brought some supper,” Sebastian offers. Fenris can smell it, hot, a pie probably.

“Let’s go to your room,” Varric suggests. Neither man touches him, but Fenris finds he is not immovable, though his knees have locked in the hours spent standing. He stumbles, and Sebastian catches him. His markings flare, too bright after hours in the dark, and the still-full bottle of wine slips out of his hand. Sebastian grabs it before its entire contents have spilled on the floor, and Fenris tries to blink away his own skin.

Isabela has a fire going in his bedroom. She has also moved another bed into the room. “I’m staying here” is all she says about it.

Fenris doesn’t eat.

Finishing off the dropped bottle, Varric turns to him. “It’s not your fault,” he says. A non-sequitur Fenris doesn’t understand until minutes later when Varric says, “We live dangerous lives. This was always—we all know what could happen.”

 _Come with me_ , Fenris had begged.

When Sebastian hands him a handkerchief, he realizes he’s crying. Sebastian has left, and Varric falls asleep next to Isabela. Fenris sits on his bed. There is blood under his fingernails. He doesn’t know who it belongs to. For a moment he thinks he will never be able to wash his hands again, because it could be her blood, and he can’t bear to wash her away.

But it is probably Danarius’s blood, and Danarius is dead.

Fenris is a free man.

He takes off his chest plate, his pauldrons, his vambraces. These were thrust on him by Danarius and he has no use for them anymore. His glove still has his token, a red ribbon with a bird embroidered on it, her initials, her seal. He slowly unwraps it and rubs his thumbs over the bumps of thread. She said she started sewing it the night he had kissed her while they sat at the table that still held his uneaten dinner. She hadn’t stopped until it was finished, his memory still on her lips, and she gave it to him the next day in the Hightown market her eyes heavy with sleep.

For years he has remembered her words to him at her estate as he slipped out in the night. Simple, broken at the end, and unheeded by him. _But I love you_.

 _I am sorry_ , he had replied.

 _Of course I’ll come with you. Do you even need to ask?_

He ties the ribbon over his bare wrist before walking out of the mansion. He doesn’t look back, he simply walks. Near the edge of Hightown, the dog catches up with him. Fenris says nothing, but the dog matches his pace.

By dawn, Kirkwall is far behind them.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first time writing a story in the present tense. I also have the start of another chapter or two, dealing with the fallout with her other friends. Not sure if I'll post them or leave this as a stand-alone.


End file.
